Rose Madder Read online

  Norman's palms were covered with a faint lacework of semicircular white scars. They had been made by his fingernails, but their real source was deep inside his head, an oven which had been running at broil for most of his life.

  "You better be scared," he murmured. "And if you're not now, I guarantee you will be soon. "

  Yes. He had to have her. Without Rose, everything that had happened this spring--the glamour bust, the good press, the reporters who had stunned him by asking respectful questions for a change, even the promotion--meant nothing. The women he had slept with since Rose had left meant nothing, either. What mattered was she had left him. What mattered more was he hadn't had the slightest clue she meant to do it. And what mattered most was she had taken his bank card. She had only used it once, and for a paltry three hundred and fifty dollars, but that wasn't the point.

  The point was that she had taken what was his, she had forgotten who was the meanest motherfucker in the jungle, and for that she would have to pay. The price would be high, too.

  High.

  He'd strangled one of the women he'd been with since Rose left. Choked her, then dumped her behind a grain-storage tower on the west side of the lake. Was he supposed to blame that one on his temper, too? He didn't know, how was that for nuts? For right out to lunch? All he knew was he had picked the woman out of the strolling meat-market down on Fremont Street, a little brunette honey in fawn-colored hotpants with these big Daisy Mae tits poking out the front of her halter. He didn't really see how much she looked like Rose (or so he told himself now, and so he perhaps really believed) until he was shagging her in the back of his current duty-car, an anonymous four-year-old Chevy. What had happened was she turned her head and the lights around the top of the nearest grain-storage tower had shone on her face for a moment, shone on it in a certain way, and in that moment the whore was Rose, the bitch who had walked out on him without even leaving a note, without leaving so much as one fucking word, and before he knew what he was doing he had the halter wrapped around the whore's neck and the whore's tongue was sticking out of her mouth and the whore's eyes were bulging out of their sockets like glass marbles. And the worst thing about it was that once she was dead, the whore hadn't looked like Rose at all.

  Well, he hadn't panicked... but then, why would he? It hadn't been the first time, after all.

  Had Rose known that? Sensed that?

  Was that why she had run? Because she was afraid he might--

  "Don't be an asshole, " he muttered, and closed his eyes.

  A bad idea. What he saw was what he all too often saw in his dreams lately: the green ATM card from Merchant's Bank, grown to an enormous size and floating in the blackness like a currency-colored dirigible. He opened his eyes again in a hurry. His hands hurt. He unrolled his fingers and observed the welling cuts in his palms with no surprise. He was accustomed to the stigmata of his temper, and he knew how to deal with it: by reestablishing control. That meant thinking and planning, and those things began with review.

  He had called the police in the closer of the two cities, had identified himself, and then had identified Rose as the prime suspect in a big-money bank-card scam (the card was the worst thing of all, and it never really left his mind anymore). He gave her name as Rose McClendon, feeling sure she would have gone back to her maiden name. If it turned out she hadn't, he would simply pass off as coincidence the fact that the suspect and the investigating officer shared the same name. It had been known to happen. And it was Daniels they were talking about, not Trzewski or Beauschatz,

  He had also faxed the cops side-by-side pictures of Rose. One was a photo of her sitting on the back steps, taken by Roy Foster, a cop friend of his, last August. It wasn't very good--it showed how much lard she'd put on since hitting the big three-oh, for one thing--but it was black and white and showed her facial features with reasonable clarity. The other was a police artist's conception (Al Kelly, one talented sonofabitch, had done it on his own time, at Norman request) of the same woman, only with a scarf over her head.

  The cops in that other city, the closer city, had asked all the right questions and gone to all the right places--the homeless shelters, the transient hotels, the halfway houses where you could sometimes get a look at the current guest-list, if you knew who and how to ask--with no result. Norman himself had made as many calls as he'd had time for, hunting with ever-increasing frustration for some sort of paper trail. He even paid for a faxed list of the city's newest driver's license applicants, with no result.

  The idea that she might escape him entirely, escape her just punishment for what she had done (especially for daring to take the bank card), still hadn't crossed his mind, but he now reluctantly came to the conclusion that she could have gone to that other city after all, that she could have been so afraid of him that two hundred and fifty miles just wasn't far enough.

  Not that eight hundred miles would be, a fact she would soon learn.

  In the meantime, he had been sitting here long enough. It was time to find a dolly or a janitor's cart and start moving his crap into his new office two floors up. He swung his feet off the desk, and as he did, the telephone rang. He picked it up.

  "Is this Inspector Daniels?" the voice on the other end asked.

  "Yes it is, " he replied, thinking (with no great pleasure) Detective Inspector First Grade Daniels, as a matter of fact.

  "Oliver Robbins here. "

  Robbins. Robbins. The name was familiar, but--

  "From Continental Express? I sold a bus ticket to a woman you're looking for."

  Daniels sat up straighter in his seat. "Yes, Mr. Robbins, I remember you very well.

  "I saw you on television, Robbins said. "It's wonderful that you caught those people. That crack is awful stuff. We see people using it in the bus station all the time, you know. "

  "Yes, Daniels said, allowing no trace of impatience to show in his voice. "I'm sure you do. "

  "Will those people actually go to jail?"

  "I think most of them will. How can I help you today?"

  "Actually I'm hoping that I can help you," Robbins said. "Do you remember telling me to call you if I remembered anything else? About the woman in the dark glasses and red scarf, I mean. "

  "Yes, " Norman said. His voice was still calm and friendly, but the hand not holding the phone had rolled into a tight fist again, and the nails were digging, digging.

  "Well, I didn't think I would, but something came to me this morning while I was in the shower. I've been thinking about it all day, and I'm sure I'm right. She really did say it that way."

  "Say what what way?" he asked. His voice was still reasonable, calm--pleasant, even--but now blood was brightly visible in the creases of his closed fist. Norman opened one of the drawers of his empty desk and hung the fist over it. A little baptism on behalf of the next man to use this shitty little closet.

  "You see, she didn't tell me where she wanted to go; I told her. That's probably why I couldn't remember when you asked me, Inspector Daniels, although my head for that sort of thing is usually quite good. "

  "I'm not getting you. "

  "People buying tickets usually give you their destination," Robbins said. " 'Give me a round trip to Nashville,' or 'One way to Lansing, please.' Follow me?"

  "Yes."

  "This woman didn't do it that way. She didn't say the name of the place; she said the time she wanted to go. That's what I remembered this morning in the shower. She said, 'I want to buy a ticket on the eleven-oh-five bus. Are there still some seats on that one?' As if the place she was going didn't matter, as if it only mattered that--"

  "--that she go as quick as she could and get as far away as she could!" Norman exclaimed. "Yes! Yes, of course! Thanks, Mr. Robbins!"

  "I'm glad I could help." Robbins sounded a bit taken aback by the burst of emotion from the other end of the line. "This woman, you guys must really want her. "

  "We do," Norman said. He was once more smiling the smile which had always chilled
Rosie's skin and made her want to back up against a wall to protect her kidneys. "You bet we do. That eleven-oh-five bus, Mr. Robbins--where does it go?"

  Robbins told him, then asked: "Was she part of the crack-ring? The woman you're looking for?"

  "No, it's a credit-card scam," Norman said, and Robbins started to reply to that--he was apparently ready to settle into a comfy little chat--but Norman dropped the phone back into the cradle, cutting him off in midrap. He put his feet up on the desk again. Finding a dolly and moving his crap could wait. He leaned back in the desk chair and looked at the ceiling. "A credit-card scam, you bet, " he said. "But you know what they say about the long arm of the law."

  He reached out with his left hand and opened his fist, exposing the blood-smeared palm. He flexed the fingers, which were also bloody.

  "Long arm of the law, bitch, " he said, and suddenly began to laugh. "Long fucking arm of the law, coming for you. You best believe it. " He kept flexing his fingers, watching small drops of blood patter down to the surface of his desk, not caring, laughing, feeling fine.

  Things were back on track again.

  7

  When she got back to D & S, Rosie found Pam sitting in a folding chair in the basement rec room. She had a paperback in her lap, but she was watching Gert Kinshaw and a skinny little thing who had come in about ten days before--Cynthia something. Cynthia had a gaudy punk hairdo--half green, half orange--and looked as if she might weigh all of ninety pounds. There was a bulky bandage over her left ear, which her boyfriend had tried, with a fair amount of success, to tear off. She was wearing a tank-top with Peter Tosh at the center of a swirling blue-green psychedelic sunburst. NOT GONNA GIVE IT UP! the shirt proclaimed. Every time she moved, the oversized armholes of the shirt disclosed her teacup-sized breasts and small strawberry-colored nipples. She was panting and her face streamed with sweat, but she looked almost daffily pleased to be where she was and who she was.

  Gert Kinshaw was as different from Cynthia as dark from day. Rosie had never gotten it completely clear in her mind if Gert was a counsellor, a long-time resident of D & S, or just a friend of the court, so to speak. She showed up, stayed a few days, and then disappeared again. She often sat in the circle during therapy sessions (these ran twice a day at D & S, with attendance at four a week a mandatory condition for residents), but Rosie had never heard her say anything. She was tall, six feet one at least, and big--her shoulders were wide and soft and dark brown, her breasts the size of melons, and her belly a large, pendulous pod that pooched out her size XXXL tee-shirts and hung over the sweatpants she always wore. Her hair was a jumble of frizzy braids (it was very kinky). She looked so much like one of those women you saw sitting in the laundromat, eating Twinkies and reading the latest issue of the National Enquirer, that it was easy to miss the hard flex of her biceps, the toned look of her thighs under the old gray sweatpants, and the way her big ass did not jiggle when she walked. The only time Rosie ever heard her talk much was during these rec-room seminars.

  Gert taught the fine art of self-defense to any and all D & S residents who wanted to learn. Rosie had taken a few lessons herself, and still tried to practice what Gert called Six Great Ways to Fuck Up an Asshole at least once a day. She wasn't very good at them, and couldn't imagine actually trying them on a real man--the guy with the David Crosby moustache leaning in the doorway of The Wee Nip, for instance--but she liked Gert. She particularly liked the way Gert's broad dark face changed when she was teaching, breaking out of its customary claylike immobility and taking on animation and intelligence. Becoming pretty, in fact. Rosie had once asked her what, exactly, she was teaching--was it tae kwon do, or jujitsu, or karate? Some other discipline, perhaps? Gert had just shrugged. "A little of this and a little of that," she had said. "Leftovers."

  Now the Ping-Pong table had been moved aside and the middle of the rec-room floor had been covered with gray mats. Eight or nine folding chairs had been set up along one pine-panelled wall, between the ancient stereo and the prehistoric color TV, where everything looked either pale green or pale pink. The only chair currently occupied was the one Pam was sitting on. With her book in her lap, her hair tied back with a piece of blue yarn, and her knees primly together, she looked like a wallflower at a high-school dance. Rosie sat down next to her, propping her wrapped picture against her shins.

  Gert, easily two hundred and seventy pounds, and Cynthia, who probably could have tipped the scales over a hundred only by wearing Georgia Giants and a fully loaded backpack, circled each other. Cynthia was panting and smiling hugely. Gert was calm and silent, slightly bent at her nonwaist, her arms held out in front of her. Rosie looked at them, both amused and uneasy. It was like watching a squirrel, or maybe a chipmunk, stalk a bear.

  "I was getting worried about you," Pam said. "The thought of a search-party had crossed my mind, actually."

  "I had the most amazing afternoon. How 'bout you, though? How you feeling?"

  "Better. In my opinion, Midol is the answer to all the world's problem. Never mind that, what happened to you? You're glowing!"

  "Really?"

  "Really. So give. How come?"

  "Well, let's see," Rosie said. She began to tick things off on her fingers. "I found out my engagement ring was a fake, I swapped it for a picture--I'm going to hang it in my new place when I get it--I got offered a job ..." She paused--a calculating pause--and then added, "... And I met someone interesting."

  Pam looked at her with round eyes. "You're making it up!"

  "Nope. Swear to God. Don't get your water hot, though, he's sixty-five if he's a day." She was speaking of Robbie Lefferts, but the image her mind briefly presented to her was Bill Steiner, he of the blue silk vest and interesting eyes. But that was ridiculous. At this point in her life she needed love-interest like she needed lip-cancer. And besides, hadn't she decided that Steiner had to be at least seven years younger than she? Just a baby, really. "He's the one who offered me the job. His name is Robbie Lefferts. But never mind him right now--want to see my new picture?"

  "Aw, come on an do it!" Gert said from the middle of the room. She sounded both amiable and irritated. "This ain't the school dance, sugar." The last word came out sugah.

  Cynthia rushed her, the tail of her oversized tank-top flapping. Gert turned sideways, took the slender girl with the tu-tone hair by the forearms, and flipped her. Cynthia went over with her heels in the air and landed on her back. "Wheeee!" she said, and bounced back to her feet like a rubber ball.

  "No, I don't want to see your picture," Pam said. "Not unless it's of the guy. Is he really sixty-five? I doubt it!"

  "Maybe older," Rosie said. "There was another one, though. He was the one who told me that the diamond in my engagement ring was only a zirconia. Then he traded me for the picture." She paused. "He wasn't sixty-five."

  "What did he look like?"

  "Hazel eyes," Rosie said, and bent over her picture. "No more until you tell me what you think of this."

  "Rosie, don't be a booger!"

  Rosie grinned--she had almost forgotten the pleasures of a little harmless teasing--and continued to strip off the wrapping paper with which Bill Steiner had carefully covered the first meaningful purchase of her new life.

  "Okay," Gert told Cynthia, who was once more circling her. Gert bounced slowly up and down on her large brown feet. Her breasts rose and subsided like ocean waves beneath the white tee-shirt she was wearing. "You see how it's done, now do it. Remember, you can't flip me--a pipsqueak like you'd wind up in traction, trying to flip a truck like me--but you can help me to flip myself. You ready?"

  "Ready-ready-Teddy," Cynthia said. Her grin widened, revealing tiny wicked white teeth. To Rosie they looked like the teeth of some small but dangerous animal: a mongoose, perhaps. "Gertrude Kinshaw, come on down!"

  Gert rushed. Cynthia seized her meaty forearms, turned a flat, boyish hip into the swell of Gert's flank with a confidence Rosie knew she herself would never be able to match ... and suddenly
Gert was airborne, flipping over in midair, a hallucination in a white shirt and gray sweatpants. The shirt slid up to reveal the largest bra Rosie had ever seen; the beige Lycra cups looked like World War I artillery shells. When Gert hit the mats, the room shuddered.

  "Yesss!" Cynthia screamed, dancing nimbly around and shaking her clasped hands over her head. "Big mama goes down! Yessss! YESSSS! Down for the count! Down for the fucking cou--"

  Smiling--a rare expression that turned her face into something rather gruesome--Gert picked Cynthia up, held her over her head for a moment with her treelike legs spread, and then began to spin her like an airplane propeller.

  "Ouggghhh, I'm gonna puke!" Cynthia screamed, but she was laughing, too. She went around in a speedy blur of green-orange hair and psychedelic tank-top. "Ouggghhh, I'm gonna EEEEJECT!"

  "Gert, that's enough," a voice said quietly. It was Anna Stevenson, standing at the foot of the stairs. She was once again dressed in black and white (Rosie had seen her in other combinations, but not many), this time tapered black pants and a white silk blouse with long sleeves and a high neck. Rosie envied her elegance. She always envied Anna's elegance.

  Looking slightly ashamed of herself, Gert set Cynthia gently back on her feet.

  "I'm okay, Anna," Cynthia said. She wobbled four zigzag steps across the mat, stumbled, sat down, and began to giggle.

  "I see you are," Anna said dryly.

  "I flipped Gert," she said. "You should have seen it. I think it was the thrill of my life. Honestly."

  "I'm sure it was, but Gert would tell you she flipped herself," Anna said. "You just helped her do what her body wanted to do already."

  "Yeah, I guess so," Cynthia said. She got cautiously to her feet, then promptly plumped back down on her fanny (what there was of it) and giggled some more. "God, it's like someone put the whole room on a record-player."

  Anna came across the room to where Rosie and Pam were sitting. "What have you got there?" she asked Rosie.

  "A picture. I bought it this afternoon. It's for my new place, when I get it. My room." And then, a little fearfully, she added: "What do you think?"